Hardball

Few people were on the streets. I passed a woman clutching an overgrown toddler under one arm, a plastic shopping bag under the other. A couple of men perched on the curb at the corner of Ashland were passing a paper bag from hand to hand. A radio on the sidewalk behind them blared loudly enough to shake my Mustang while I waited for the light to change.

When I pulled up across the street from Fit for Your Hoof, I sat for a minute, trying to dispel the depression I’d let build in me during the drive. A man was sweeping the sidewalk, talking loudly to himself. When he realized I was watching the store, he shook his broom at me, yelling something unintelligible, before scooting backward, crab-like, into the shop. He almost collided with a woman carrying a scuffed pair of white nurse’s shoes by the heels who was leaving the shop, but he circled around her in the nick of time.

I stopped to look in the window, where Rivers was displaying goods to “Help your feet / Feel pretty neat / When they hit that concrete.” Toe pads, arch supports, gel inserts. Above them hung a clotheslineful of dog leashes and collars, and, on the shelves at the back, bright headbands, sashes, handbags, and even a little cache of toys. The tidy, cheery window did its own work for change in a hard world.

When I opened the door, I found myself in a thicket of leather. Ropes hanging from the ceiling displayed more purses, briefcases, harnesses, berets, even work boots and cowboy boots. Behind the ropes, a radio was tuned to Talk of the Nation, and I could hear the whine of a belt sander. When I pushed the ropes apart, a steam whistle blew, and a voice cried, “Welcome to Chicago.”

I stopped, startled. Two men in front of a chessboard looked up at me and laughed. The counter was behind them. A man working on a pair of shoes, his back to the room, didn’t turn around but kept sanding the edges on a new heel. I didn’t see the man who’d flourished his broom at me.

“Whistle always makes people jump when they don’t know it’s coming,” one of the chess players said. He was a balding man with a paunch that pressed against an old T-shirt with the Machinists Union logo on it.

“You lost?” His partner was ski

“Often. I’m looking for Curtis Rivers.”

The man behind the counter picked up the second shoe, still not looking at me.

“IRS or paternity suit?” the first chess player said. The savage tone underlying the jokey comment was directed at me, not the man at the belt sander. What are you doing down here, anyway?

“My father isn’t present, but he’s accounted for,” I said. “Ditto my children. Miss Ella Gadsden is the reason I’m looking for him.”

The sander fell silent. The only noise in the room came from a woman on the radio asking how consumers could ever be sure they were buying clothes made in a factory that respected the workers.

The chess players didn’t seem to know Miss Ella’s name, but the man behind the counter finally turned around. He placed the shoe he was working on, an old brown Florsheim, in the middle of the counter and leaned over to look at me.

“That’s a name I haven’t heard for a while,” he said, “but I don’t think I’ve heard yours at all.”

“V. I. Warshawski. I’m a private investigator. Miss Ella hired me to look for Lamont Gadsden. She said Curtis Rivers was one of his friends.”

Another long pause, before the man behind the counter said, “We knew each other, a long time back. Miss Ella, what, is she grief struck after all these years? She rented out his bedroom five months after he left. Didn’t seem as though she was expecting to see him again.”

“Did you know her sister, too? Miss Claudia? I haven’t met her. She’s very ill, they tell me. But I understand it’s Miss Claudia who actually wants to find him.”

“You got some kind of identification, Ms. Investigator?” Curtis Rivers asked.

I showed him the laminated copy of my license.

“Warshawski. Warshawski. Now, why do I know that name?”

“Hockey?” I suggested. “A lot of people remember my cousin Boom-Boom.”

All three men laughed at that, as if the idea of hockey itself was a joke.

“A simple no would do,” I said, nettled. Boom-Boom had been more than my cousin; we’d been best friends growing up, proud of our reputation as the wildest kids in South Chicago. Besides, even though he’s been dead a dozen years now, they still talk about Boom-Boom in the same breath as Bobby Hull, in that mausoleum on Washington Street.

“Miss Ella couldn’t remember many people who might have known her son. You, Mr. Rivers. Two other friends, one dead, the other, Steve Sawyer, I can’t find.” I paused, but Rivers didn’t fill in the blank. “A science teacher. Pastor Hebert, from her church.”

“I heard he passed,” one of the chess players said.

“No, he’s living in Pullman with his daughter,” I said. “But people at the church are saying he’s not too fit mentally, so I don’t know what he can tell me.”

“And what can I tell you?” Curtis Rivers asked.

“Anything you can remember about Lamont Gadsden. Anyone else he hung out with, anyplace he talked about going, when you last saw him, what his mood was, all those things. If you know where Steve Sawyer is, you could get me out of here so I could ask him those questions.”

“And what will you do if I tell you those things?”

“Talk to more people. Try to find someone who could give me a lead on where he went when he disappeared. Do you remember the last time you saw him?”

Rivers picked up the shoe again. “It’s been a lot of years, Ms. Warshawski.”

“Miss Ella says Lamont left her house the day before the big snow of ’sixty-seven. She says that she and Miss Claudia never saw him again, but did you?”

“The day, the hour, and the minute-trust Miss Ella for that. My memories aren’t lined up in formation like that, but if anything comes to me I’ll call you.” He turned around and flipped the belt sander back on.

I laid one of my cards on the counter, put two more next to the chessboard. “If it’s any help, I’m not going to faint or run to the State’s Attorney’s Office if I hear about some old gang co

I raised my voice to carry over the belt sander, but none of the men responded. I pushed through the display ropes to the front door, wincing when the steam whistle blew and the recording a

7

I SCOWLED AT THE DASHBOARD. DID CURTIS RIVERS KNOW something about Lamont that he didn’t want to tell me? Or was it just that the gleam had worn off my wi

I hadn’t had high hopes when I started this investigation, but somehow I didn’t expect to hit so many dead ends this fast. Pastor Hebert, who lived with his daughter in Pullman, five miles farther down the Ryan from Fit for Your Hoof, was the last person on my list. Given his questionable mental state, I didn’t expect to learn anything startling, but it would wrap up this part of the inquiry. I could go to Miss Ella tomorrow and tell her she either needed to give me more background or end the investigation.

I turned on the ignition but phoned Pastor Hebert’s daughter before taking off. I started to explain who I was, but she already knew. Whoever I had spoken to at the Saving Word Gospel Church this morning had been on the phone to Rose Hebert within seconds. Rose supposed I could come down now, although what anyone could tell me after all this time she couldn’t imagine.